Inspired by the work of Psychologist Erich Fromm, who asserted that the fear of freedom propels anxiety-ridden people into authoritarian settings, Blumenthal explains in a compelling narrative how a culture of personal crises has defined the radical right, transforming the Republican party for the next generation and setting the stage for the future of American politics.

Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel

In Goliath, New York Times best-selling author Max Blumenthal takes us on a journey through the badlands and high roads of Israel-Palestine, painting a startling portrait of Israeli society under the siege of increasingly authoritarian politics as the occupation of the Palestinians deepens. Beginning with the national elections carried out during Israel's war on Gaza in 2008/9, which brought into power the country's most right-wing government to date, Blumenthal tells the story of Israel in the wake of the collapse of the Oslo peace process.

Better Off Without 'Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession

Let’s talk about secession. Not exactly the most suitable cocktail party conversation starter anywhere in the country, but take that notion deep into the heart of Dixie and you might find yourself running from the possum-hunting conservatives, trailer-park lifers, and prayer warriors Chuck Thompson encountered during the two years he spent traveling the American South asking the question: Would we be better off without ’em?

One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

Conventional wisdom holds that America has been a Christian nation since the Founding Fathers. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse argues that the idea of "Christian America" is nothing more than a myth - and a relatively recent one at that.

Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel

Soon after WWII, U.S. statesman Dean Acheson warned that creating Israel on land already inhabited by Palestinians would "imperil" both American and all Western interests in the region. Despite warnings such as this one, President Truman supported establishing a Jewish state on land primarily inhabited by Muslims and Christians.

The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted

There was a time, not so very long ago, when perfectly rational people ran the Republican Party. So how did the party of Lincoln become the party of lunatics? That is what this book aims to answer. Fear not, the Dems come in for their share of tough talk - they are zombies, a party of the living dead. Mike Lofgren came to Washington in the early eighties - those halcyon, post-Nixonian glory days - for what he imagined would be a short stint on Capitol Hill.

Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted

Few American institutions have inflicted greater suffering on ordinary people than the Supreme Court of the United States. Since its inception the justices of the Supreme Court have shaped a nation where children toiled in coal mines, where Americans could be forced into camps because of their race, and where a woman could be sterilized against her will by state law.

The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right

The New Hate takes listeners on a surprising, often shocking, sometimes bizarrely amusing tour through the swamps of nativism, racism, and paranoia that have long thrived on the American fringe. Arthur Goldwag shows us the parallels between the hysteria about the Illuminati that wracked the new American Republic in the 1790s and the McCarthyism that roiled the 1950s, and he discusses the similarities between the anti-New Deal forces of the 1930s and the Tea Party movement today.

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America

Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other televangelists first spoke of the United States being a Christian nation that would build a global Christian empire, it was hard to take such hyperbolic rhetoric seriously. Today, such language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very real threat to our freedoms and our way of life.

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

They insist they are just a group of friends, yet they funnel millions of dollars through tax-free corporations. They claim to disdain politics, but congressmen of both parties describe them as the most influential religious organization in Washington. They say they are not Christians, but simply believers. Behind the scenes at every National Prayer Breakfast since 1953 has been the Family, an elite network dedicated to a religion of power for the powerful.

Wages of Rebellion

Revolutions come in waves and cycles. We are again riding the crest of a revolutionary epic, much like 1848 or 1917, from the Arab Spring to movements against austerity in Greece to the Occupy movement. In Wages of Rebellion, Chris Hedges - who has chronicled the malaise and sickness of a society in terminal moral decline in his books Empire of Illusion and Death of the Liberal Class - investigates what social and psychological factors cause revolution, rebellion, and resistance.

Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party

The chaotic events leading up to Mitt Romney's defeat in the 2012 election indicated how far the Republican Party had rocketed rightward away from the center of public opinion. Republicans in Congress threatened to shut down the government and force a U.S. debt default. Tea Party activists mounted primary challenges against Republican officeholders who appeared to exhibit too much pragmatism or independence. Moderation and compromise were dirty words in the Republican presidential debates. The GOP, it seemed, had suddenly become a party of ideological purity. Except this development is not new at all.

Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War

Ever since 9/11 America has fought an endless war on terror, seeking enemies everywhere and never promising peace. In Pay Any Price, James Risen reveals an extraordinary litany of the hidden costs of that war: from squandered and stolen dollars, to outrageous abuses of power, to wars on normalcy, decency, and truth. In the name of fighting terrorism, our government has done things every bit as shameful as its historic wartime abuses - and until this audiobook, it has worked very hard to cover them up.

John L. Moncrief says:"If you care about our liberties, read this book."

Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

The financial crisis that exploded in 2008 isn’t past but prologue. The stunning rise, fall, and rescue of Wall Street in the bubble-and-bailout era was the coming-out party for the network of looters who sit at the nexus of American political and economic power. The grifter class - made up of the largest players in the financial industry and the politicians who do their bidding - has been growing in power for a generation.

The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles. Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail. In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends - growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration - come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty.

God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican

From a master chronicler of legal and financial misconduct, a magnificent investigation nine years in the making, this book traces the political intrigue and inner workings of the Catholic Church. Decidedly not about faith, belief in God, or religious doctrine, this audiobook is about the church's accumulation of wealth and its byzantine entanglements with financial markets across the world.

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War

After 30 years spent scratching together a middle-class life out of a “dirt poor” childhood, Joe Bageant moved back to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia, where he realized that his family and neighbors were the very people who carried George W. Bush to victory. That was ironic, because Winchester, like countless American small towns, is fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass.

It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism

Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein identify two overriding problems that have led Congress—and the United States—to the brink of institutional collapse. But they offer a panoply of useful ideas and reforms, endorsing some solutions, like greater public participation and institutional restructuring, while debunking others, like independent or third-party candidates. Above all, they call on the media as well as the public to focus on the true causes of dysfunction rather than just throwing the bums out every election cycle.

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict.

Conservatives Without Conscience

John Dean's last New York Times best seller, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, offered the former White House insider's unique and telling perspective on George W. Bush's presidency. Once again, Dean employs his distinctive knowledge and understanding of Washington politics and process to examine the conservative movement's current inner circle of radical Republican leaders, from Capitol Hill to Pennsylvania Avenue to K Street and beyond.

Pity the Billionaire: The Unexpected Resurgence of the American Right

From the best-selling author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, a wonderfully insightful and sardonic look at how the worst economy since the 1930s has brought about the revival of conservatism. Economic catastrophe usually brings social protest and demands for change - or at least it's supposed to. But when Thomas Frank set out in 2009 to look for expressions of American discontent, all he could find were loud demands that the economic system be made even harsher on the recession's victims....

The Party's Over: How the Extreme Right Hijacked the GOP and I Became a Democrat

Charlie Crist, the former Republican governor of Florida, spent years in the party's inner circle. In this no-holds-barred memoir, he shows why he switched sides and became a Democrat. After serving as a Republican governor - one who was on the short list for the vice presidency in 2008 - Charlie Crist made headlines when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate as an Independent. He was on the front page again when he endorsed President Obama in 2012 and spoke at the Democratic National Convention - and yet again when he officially joined the Democratic Party later that year.

Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (Updated Edition)

From its establishment to the present day, Israel has enjoyed a special position in the American roster of international friends. In Fateful Triangle, Noam Chomsky explores the character and historical development of this special relationship.

Fast Times in Palestine: A Love Affair with a Homeless Homeland

Pamela Olson, a small town girl from eastern Oklahoma, had what she always wanted: a physics degree from Stanford University. But instead of feeling excited for what came next, she felt consumed by dread and confusion. This irresistible memoir chronicles her journey from aimless ex-bartender to Ramallah-based journalist and foreign press coordinator for a Palestinian presidential candidate.

Escape from Freedom

lf a man cannot stand freedom, he will probably turn fascist. This, in the fewest possible words, is the essential argument in this modem classic, Escape from Freedom. The author, Erich Fromm, is a distinguished psychologist, late of Berlin and Heidelberg, now of New York City.

Publisher's Summary

Republican Gomorrah is a bestiary of dysfunction, scandal, and sordidness from the dark heart of the theocratic forces that now have a leash on the party. It shows how those forces are the ones that establishment Republicans, like John McCain, have to bow to if they have any hope of running for president. More that just an exposé, Republican Gomorrah shows that many of the movement's leading figures are stained by crisis and scandal: depression, mental illness, extramarital affairs, struggles with homosexual urges, heavy medication, pornography addiction, serial domestic abuse, and even murder.

Inspired by the work of psychologist Erich Fromm, who asserted that the fear of freedom propels anxiety-ridden people into authoritarian settings, Blumenthal explains in a compelling narrative how a culture of personal crises has defined the radical right, transforming the Republican party for the next generation and setting the stage for the future of American politics.

What the Critics Say

"Republican Gomorrah is an irresistible combination of anthropology and psychopathology that exerts the queasy fascination of (let's face it) something very like pornography." (The New Yorker)"A brave and resourceful reporter adept at turning over rocks that public-relations-savvy Christian conservative leaders would prefer undisturbed." (The New York Times Book Review)

'A great listen. Tells the story of the roots of the Christian right and some of the colorful mayor players. One part illuminates religions inability to deal honestly about sex from education/contraception/gays/priests/pornography etc.. Another part covers the Christian right using in, overtly political ways, hotbed issues like the Terri Schiavo case.It is well researched and the narrative is informative and entertaining and shows the pious in a down to earth light. I found it disturbing how Focus on the Family's Dobson personally profited a million dollars from his interview with serial killer Ted Bundy and forgave Ted of brutally killing so many young women...and having sex their corpses. Hey, Jesus forgives. Right? Part of the draw of the book is offensive actions of the heavy hitters involved but it is not the basis of the book. The book looks philosophically at the roots of people needing/wanting some one to tell them what to do and think. And to do so uncritically. Blindly faithful. And the costs of alienating moderate Republicans. Not everyone is welcome under the big tent. My overall impression is the book saying, "Hey, look at these people. Do they really represent our Republican party?"

Republican Gomorrah reinforced my worst fears about the "religious" right.I have long been concerned about the power of the fundamentalists in this country. It is truly unnerving to hear how unscrupulous these "Christians" really are.Blumenthal thoroughly exposes the roots of these ruthless shysters. His book should be a wakeup call for all freedom loving Americans.

I have been a Blumenthal fan for many years, but this is by far his best work. I must admit, it scared the "bejesus" out of me, but it's the kind of scared we all need to be if we really want to change the way our country works. The narrator was excellent and the book is almost too easy to listen to because you get so caught up in the craziness of the story.

Everyone with a brain should get this book. I couldn't stop listening to it. It was packed tightly with information and read very well. A must listen to fully appeciate their insanity and what we, as a country and a people, are really dealing with. I came away with a new understanding (and I am already well-informed) of truly how much money and how out of their minds the Right really is.......that they're nuts and dangerous!

Interesting, though somewhat depressing, read, focusing on the highly dysfunctional James Dobson of "Focus on the Family" and his takeover of the congressional Republican caucus, and Bush Administration, to the extent that both dared do nothing without his direct approval.
First part chronicles chronicles the rise of Dobson (who strongly advocates regularly beating children) and his allies; the second part highlights scandals of Vitter, Craig, etc., giving few new details, but highlighting the born-again movement's hypocrisy and political expedience, concluding in a profile of the sheer nuttiness (and potential danger) of The Palin Gambit - the "witch" her Kenyan pal had bragged about driving from his town was actually a caretaker of several orphans, still living in the town, held in high regard by the locals.

After listening to the first few minutes of this audiobook, I began to regret having not listened to the sample and just going off the comments and synopsis. Blumenthal is down right belligerent in his distaste for religion. Being an Angeleno and having grown up around people of many faiths, the disrespectful tone and demeanor he takes when describing people's deeply held spiritual beliefs was distasteful and led me to tune out most of what he was trying to say.
In the end, this book only goes to prove that we are all human, we make mistakes, and we are largely driven by self interests. We attempt to coordinate our self interests and spiritual beliefs, but sometimes life gets in the way and we have to make ethical or moral decisions that go against those beliefs.
In the end, it seems like the book is calling for a more moderated voice to come through, but if you mock deeply held beliefs of people you disagree with, then you come off as being just as ignorant and intolerant as you believe they are.
I would not recommend this book to any one on the right, left, or center unless they were interested in finding out why and how the Right and Left are talking past one another.

My husband and I enjoy politics and tend to be liberal, so we thought we would enjoy this "expose" about the origins of the religious right. But the story got boring after a while. Also, we were sometimes listening to it in the car with our kids (they were playing electronic games and not really listening) and we were taken by surprise a couple of times by adult language, including the "f" word. So we had to stop listening to it when the kids were around, and we just didn't enjoy it enough to go to the trouble of listening after they went to bed. All in all, I'd say the book was a disappointment.

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